Kiss the Dust by Elizabeth Laird - first published 1991
This novel was written for teenagers and is seen through the eyes of 13 year old Tara, whose family are Kurds. It is 1984 and Tara is living with her parents, younger sister and older brother in a spacious modern house in Sulaimaniya, Iraq. Then one day the secret police come to their house to arrest her father because they think he is involved with the pesh murgas (Kurish freedom fighters). The family flee initially to their ancestral village where they live for a few months in a one room house. However all the villages in the area are bombed by Iraqi planes and Tara and her family flee by night on horseback over the Zagros Mountains into Iran. At this time Iran is at war with Iraq and they are treated with suspicion and kept locked up in refugee camps where the conditions are very unsanitary and basic. After a few months they fly to England where they claim political asylum. This book brings to life very vividly the plight of the Kurdish people in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's rule. 8/10
20th January 2010
No comments:
Post a Comment